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Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

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Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#101

Post by coderdude »

ryanmcbride wrote: post #94

I've never interacted directly with IBM, but I remember about 2 years ago, they had a talk at the Akamai Edge conference about how they dealt with bloated cookies. The company I work for has the same problem so I sat in to see what their solution was. The problem they were having is that all the various IBM lines of business added so much garbage onto the client's cookie, that eventually their pages would stop loadin…

Those two departments couldn't possibly be related. It seems unfair to base judgement on the entire company for that.

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#102

Post by rossdavidh »

framebit wrote: post #31
dmix wrote: post #26

Anyone know what "RA" stand for? The employees kept mentioning it on the "Watching IBM" blog. I couldn't find a decent match via Google. For ex: > IBM Watson Health has initiated a significant RA across multiple offices.

RA = Resource Action. Add it as the next entry on a long list of euphemisms for layoffs.

"layoff" being a euphemism for "mass firing of people", that has been around so long it doesn't even seem like a euphemism any more. As you said, it's a long list.

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#103

Post by cirgue »

nostrademons wrote: post #97
cirgue wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the things you mentioned are even close to AI. They’re applied statistics, and they mostly use techniques we’ve known about for decades but have only now found a use case because computing and storage is cheap enough to make them viable.

The recommendation, translation, & image classification algorithms are all done with deep-learning; that's considered AI now. There was a time, not all that long ago, when SVMs, Bayesian networks, and perceptrons were considered AI. That's behind the spam filters, predictive keyboards, and most of the search signals. There was a time, a bit longer ago, when beam search and A* were considered AI. That's behind the gam…

This is my point: the term AI has always been BS. It was BS when beam search was AI, it was BS when expert systems were AI, and it is equally as BS when applied to neural networks. It comes to the same thing: the 'AI' tools we use are increasingly good function approximators. That's it. It's still reaching the moon by building successively taller ladders.

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#104

Post by abhgh »

cirgue wrote: post #88
nostrademons wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use & depend upon plenty of products that are built upon AI - GMail spam filtering & categorized inbox, Google image search, YouTube & Netflix recommendations, cheque OCR at my ATM, predictive keyboards on my phone, Amazon's "people also buy with this product" feature, Google translate, computer opponents in games that I play, and all of the signals that feed into Google Search. The irony is that not one of these b…

None of the things you mentioned are even close to AI. They’re applied statistics, and they mostly use techniques we’ve known about for decades but have only now found a use case because computing and storage is cheap enough to make them viable.

This is an interesting comment - where would you draw the line between AI and applied statistics? A lot of AI which happens to be ML (not saying there is non-ML AI, just that a significant chunk of AI being practiced today is ML) also happens to be applied statistics. Or have statistical interpretations.

Also, because something has been around for decades does not make it not AI. For ex the cheque OCR mentioned probably runs off (or can feasibly run off) of a neural network. I think the parent's comment holds well - not sure about the last line though ...

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#105

Post by delinka »

coderdude wrote: post #101
ryanmcbride wrote: post #94

I've never interacted directly with IBM, but I remember about 2 years ago, they had a talk at the Akamai Edge conference about how they dealt with bloated cookies. The company I work for has the same problem so I sat in to see what their solution was. The problem they were having is that all the various IBM lines of business added so much garbage onto the client's cookie, that eventually their pages would stop loadin…

Those two departments couldn't possibly be related. It seems unfair to base judgement on the entire company for that.

I dunno ... seems to me an indication of a larger systemic problem: "we couldn't even provide a company-wide engineering solution for this simple problem, so here's how we used a hack..."

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#106

Post by Urbanxassassin »

coderdude wrote: post #101
ryanmcbride wrote: post #94

I've never interacted directly with IBM, but I remember about 2 years ago, they had a talk at the Akamai Edge conference about how they dealt with bloated cookies. The company I work for has the same problem so I sat in to see what their solution was. The problem they were having is that all the various IBM lines of business added so much garbage onto the client's cookie, that eventually their pages would stop loadin…

Those two departments couldn't possibly be related. It seems unfair to base judgement on the entire company for that.

You are correct so let's talk about how there PCF solution is deprecated, and how they were still using a deprecated container management solution instead of kubernetes, and how if you use Java the for you to use liberty build packs, and how they push XP and TDD practices from he garage yet many of their consultants don't practice what they preach.

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#107

Post by mulmen »

nostrademons wrote: post #80
cirgue wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This works well for IBM generally (the products are shit) but especially well for Watson because it's extremely easy to sell AI without getting bogged down in details. The cynic in me says that every use of the term AI in any capacity is to sell experience and not functionality. When was the last time you used a product billed as 'AI' and thought 'wow, this is a huge game changer'? Siri is cool, but it's ultimately…

I use & depend upon plenty of products that are built upon AI - GMail spam filtering & categorized inbox, Google image search, YouTube & Netflix recommendations, cheque OCR at my ATM, predictive keyboards on my phone, Amazon's "people also buy with this product" feature, Google translate, computer opponents in games that I play, and all of the signals that feed into Google Search. The irony is that not one of these b…

I have always referred to computer opponents as "AI".

YouTube recommendations aren't great, they have a short memory and my feed is rarely diverse, it just shows a bunch of whatever I just watched.

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#108

Post by wil421 »

coderdude wrote: post #101
ryanmcbride wrote: post #94

I've never interacted directly with IBM, but I remember about 2 years ago, they had a talk at the Akamai Edge conference about how they dealt with bloated cookies. The company I work for has the same problem so I sat in to see what their solution was. The problem they were having is that all the various IBM lines of business added so much garbage onto the client's cookie, that eventually their pages would stop loadin…

Those two departments couldn't possibly be related. It seems unfair to base judgement on the entire company for that.

Sounds like similar stories I’ve heard about IBM but not related to cookies. Sell first and hack it together later which is very similar to a lot of places. Except IBM doesn’t seem to be able to hack it together.

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#109

Post by aiisjustanif »

coderdude wrote: post #101
ryanmcbride wrote: post #94

I've never interacted directly with IBM, but I remember about 2 years ago, they had a talk at the Akamai Edge conference about how they dealt with bloated cookies. The company I work for has the same problem so I sat in to see what their solution was. The problem they were having is that all the various IBM lines of business added so much garbage onto the client's cookie, that eventually their pages would stop loadin…

Those two departments couldn't possibly be related. It seems unfair to base judgement on the entire company for that.

So we have some more info out there:

- Their PCF solution is deprecated - They were still using a deprecated container management solution instead of kubernetes until recently - If you use Java the for you to use liberty build packs - They push XP and TDD practices from the garage yet many of their consultants don't practice what they preach.

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#110

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

rossdavidh wrote: post #91

Look I think everybody needs to cut IBM some slack here. Integrating technology with customer needs is hard, and it takes a while to get good at it, to get a process for reconciling with product managers want with what developers can actually make. Once IBM has been in this technology game for a little while, I'm sure they'll get the hang of it.

People aren't faulting IBM for tackling hard systems-integration problems.

People are faulting IBM for over-promising, under-delivering, using misleading advertising, and internally seeming to have foolish management practices.

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